Sunday Sneak Peek!

I’m participating in the excellent Sneak Peek Sunday event – a whole bunch of great authors post a short sample from a new or upcoming work.  You can see the whole list of them right here.

So here’s a really forward-looking peek – this is the first six paragraphs of book 9 of the Dream Series, which is a work in progress and will be out sometime in the spring…

This shouldn’t be happening.  I don’t understand it.  I haven’t had a patient like this in years – not since my first months of residency.  Connie Marchetti brought her son to me three days ago because he couldn’t shake a cold, and now I’m fighting to keep him alive.

And I’m losing.

Two days ago, I sent out a full panel of blood tests, including several things that I would never normally check on an eight-year-old boy.  He must have some sort of auto-immune disorder, but he’s been my patient for three years, and there’s never been the slightest sign of it.  And, anyway, boys are far less prone to most auto-immune diseases than girls are.  There was never any reason to suspect it.

There is now, though.  I’m fighting to save him, but his own body is fighting against me.  I haven’t been able to get his temperature below a hundred and one, I haven’t been able to get his breathing anywhere close to normal and he hasn’t eaten solid food in close to a week.

“Damnit, Michael, I didn’t save you three years ago just so you could die on me now!”  Yelling at him isn’t going to help, but I don’t know what else I can do at this point.  Except admit defeat and send him to a bigger hospital, with more resources to, hopefully, figure out what’s going on with him and treat it in time.

Three years ago, Michael Marchetti and his sister Celia were trapped in a basement during that awful winter storm.  I went into Celia’s dream and figured out where they were, so that they could be rescued before they froze to death.  But dreams aren’t going to help now – the answer, if there is one, it’s in his bloodwork, or, far more likely, in the mind of another doctor who can see whatever it is that I’m missing.

I don’t want to do it.  But the patient has to come first.  I stand over Michael’s bed for a couple of minutes, watching him sleep, seeing his troubled breathing and his almost complete lack of color.  I really don’t have a choice.

In the meantime, check out all the existing Dream Series books on Amazon!

 

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